A US lawmaker has said he will continue to bring Congressional amendments against any US aid to Pakistan unless Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA locate Osama bin Laden, is released from jail.

“I plan to offer an amendment to whatever foreign aid Bill comes to the floor that suggests that Pakistan should get not one penny of support for anything until Afridi, the man who helped us bring to justice Osama bin Laden is freed from a Pakistani dungeon,” Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said.

“The American people need to be outraged that Pakistan is holding Afridi in the first place after giving safe haven to Osama bin Laden, the murderer of 3,000 of our citizens. But for us then to give them aid on top of that is absolutely unconscionable,” he said during a Congressional hearing.

“I will be offering amendment until Afridi is freed, we shouldn’t even consider giving them one penny. There are other countries that are hostile to us, and we should not be giving money to those countries while their Governments are hostile to the United States,” Rohrabacher said.

Responding to questions from US lawmakers, Dr Rajiv Shah, Administrator of USAID, said it is in the interests of the US to provide civilian aid to Pakistan.

“It’ in our national security interest in (Pakistan), which is a nuclear power about to go through what we believe will be the first civilian election and hopefully peaceful transition in power they’ve experienced post-Independence,” he said.

“With respect to Pakistan, we have very important partnerships. We design them (aid) together. We absolutely retain the capacity and authority to both select projects and oversee their implementation. One example is we made a commitment to help them produce 1200 megawatts of energy. We’ve already seen through and successfully produced 800 megawatts and that’s been seen as a tremendous success,” he said.

“We have invested quite a lot of effort in a comprehensive branding strategy for anywhere in the world. Pakistan, I think, is a good example where as a result of our efforts, we have data that shows that with the awareness of American assistance efforts in Pakistan has gone up threefold,” Shah said.

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